EVERYTHING
FOR YOUR FAMILY
KID
QUIPS
During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
|
||||
|
Call me Hot Dog. I appear to be a toy dachshund, though I'm unconvinced I'm either a toy or a dachshund. I have an elephantine curl to my nose that is not, strictly speaking, dachshundian. It's elephantine. And I've never been sure that my makers intended me to be a plaything. I am, you see, very pretty. I'm made of shiny stitched vinyl, red on top, white on the bottom. I look like leather. More than a few of you would, if you came upon me, make a decoration out of me. That would be much safer than the life I'm leading, though admittedly more boring. I shall soon be 34. I have outlived most toys, not to mention most dachshunds. In my early years, I was in the employ of a little boy, and he kept me very busy. I was walked up walls and along the backs of sofas and slid over slick linoleum floors. I was tossed and caught and hugged, and at night, when the lights went out and the big people swung the door half-shut, I was made to stand guard, at the edge of the mattress, over the little boy whom I served as a toy. And when the morning sun swung through the gap in the striped blue curtains, and my guard shift came to a close, I became a diver. My boy arched my back and turned me over and lowered me slowly to the sea-green carpet, announcing my double-backflips from the high platform on the eve of the Montreal Games, where I was sure to become the world's first-ever Olympian dog. On my third dive of my third morning as a diver, my stitches burst. We learned that I was filled with sawdust. I was taken to the kitchen and placed on the olive green counter just over the utility drawer. I heard the drawer swing open, heard the scissors and pliers clatter inside, heard my boy pull a length of tape, felt him put it on me and pat it down and scratch to make it invisible. But it wouldn't become invisible. My boy had to accept that I was broken, and that he had broken me, and that fixing me was beyond his abilities. But the sawdust stopped spilling. I was so pleased that the sawdust stopped spilling. I became a decoration. I lived on the dark oak hutch in the boy's bright room, alongside the train cars and teepees. I lived that way for many years. It was an easy life, except for the dust. The view was fine. I watched the boy. I watched him grow. I watched him leave. And then one day, when I was turned the other way, a warm hand went round me and bore me downward. I watched the room rise and disappear. Everything went dark as the cardboard box was taped shut. After that, I must have slept. I had little sense of the passing time, though when I woke this fall, I knew there had been a lot of it. My boy, no longer a boy, dusted me off and said hello and put me on the old hutch for a new boy, who'd turned 2 that day. The view, once more, was fine. I yawned and stretched and looked forward to the good life. That was in October, when I still had ears and a tail. One December morning, my new boy visited a blue fountain near a green park and saw a real red dog that looked a lot like me. The dog was trying to sip an old lady's coffee. My new boy came home. He reached for me. He asked for me. I go everywhere now. I go to parks and am sent down slides. I occupy tabletops at restaurants. I am dropped through miniature basketball hoops. My new boy discovered that neither my black fabric ears nor my black fabric tail was intended as a handle. My ears and my tail now live in a cabinet high above the kitchen stove. My old boy has re-taped my belly. He has promised to have it re-stitched, to have my ears and tail restored to me, to have me made new again. But only when my new boy is willing to spend a day without me. My new boy isn't willing to do that, not yet. My old boy doesn't seem to mind at all. In spite of everything, neither do I. Greg Blake Miller of Las Vegas has just completed his first novel. He is a regular contributor to this column. |
||||
RSS Subscribe
Digg This ArticleSEARCH THE SITE
